Smart watches aside, These 3 Rings Are The Next Tech Couture

A Ring for Your Health

The Finish-designed and manufactured Oura Ring is all about healthy living. It tracks your sleep by embedding tiny sensors inside of a ceramic cased ring. Oura measures your pulse, your heartbeat (using an optical sensor), your steps, your sleep, your body temperature and respiration. During sleep, changes in body temperature and recording of slight body movements help it identify REM, deep and light sleep. By day, Oura tracks how much you sit and how much you are active. As a Bluetooth connected device, Oura gathers this data and gives you a graphic depiction of your sleep and waking activity on a companion app. One of the app’s features is a Readiness score that takes your sleep (or lack thereof) and converts it into a scale that tells you how ready you are to achieve on a given day. The ring comes in sizes 6-12 and is waterproof and scratchproof. It costs $299 and while you can order now at Ouraring.com, shipments won’t begin until December.

A Ready to Pay Ring

Eliminating the need to ever pull out a credit card or smartphone out of your pocket this is the first I’ve seen ready-to-pay jewelry. Part of the Wear2Pay system of payment jewelry, the final form can take the shape of a bracelet, ring, key fob or cuff. You can also buy it as a tiny slider that will attach to your existing fitness band.

Inside the ring (or other piece of jewelry) are some smart chips that understand contactless payment systems and can communicate with the new EMV point of purchase cash registers. The ring also houses an RFID transponder that can send your credit card information (complete with the new EMV code) to the seller.

The advantages of a piece of jewelry that you can use to pay the tab with are many. You can’t lose it as easily as you do a credit card or phone, there’s nothing that requires your input, it is fairly well fraud protected, and you never even have to recharge a battery or plug it in since the ring relies on RFID, which is powered by radio waves from the terminal. On the other hand, if you forget your ring you’re out of luck at the register.

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The gotcha? You can’t actually buy a PayWear design. You need to have a payment card that will give you one. According to the PayWear spokesperson, the jewelry will likely roll-out in Q1 2016 with a MasterCard PrePaid card account. You’ll get a unique account with the jewelry.

A Ring for Thumbing Your Way Through Life

Recently launched, Neyya turns the face of its ring into a smartpad like surface that allows you to flick your thumb across it and control just about anything that you can control with a mobile phone or remote. While it resembles a “mood ring” communicates your gestures to a phone or a handful of Bluetooth connected devices. You can use it to thumb your way through your presentations to a crowd, select music, take a selfie or silence a phone call.

The polycarbonate ring comes with its own puck sized docking station and USB cable. A charge lasts about three days. The ring is a bit bulky and I found myself garnering some unique reactions (let’s just say Siri kept showing up) as I swiped away, but with a little practice ring control is a definitely doable. Its creators say that Neyya is focused on the everyday lives of workers and upscale consumers. It works with iOS or OS X devices, Windows laptops, GoPro and Roku. Neyya is now available online and arrives in Bloomingdales, Amazon, Brookstone and Selfridges this Thanksgiving.